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Book Summary InformationAuthor: Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson Edition: Mass Market Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2007-06-26 ISBN: 076535148X Number of pages: 576 Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Book Reviews of Hunters of DuneBook Review: 2 firsts for me Summary: 1 Stars
I've never written a review on amazon before, just never been moved enough one way or another to actually jump on and throw in my 2 cents. I've also never been able to not finish a Dune book. And it's not a matter of being a Frankophile or a Herbert Jr. denier. There are series that I still read every new installment of, including some I've read since I was a kid, even though the new books are not the innovative literary gems from earlier on (for example Brian Jacques Redwall series and Alan Dean Foster's Flinx series). I feel a sense of loyalty and commitment to some of these series, continuing to read and support them, sometimes out of sheer momentum. but this book... I can't finish this book. I'm a hundred pages in, and although I fully realize that it's somewhat unfair to judge a book that you haven't finished, I just can't stomach anymore and I don't want to further corrupt my personal mental conception of what Dune is.
it's just that... this isn't really a Dune book. it's a book that has the terminology, has the charactes and settings, but somehow is a completely other product. if you're a fan of Heinlein and read his seminal work Starship Troopers, you can completely understand the sentiment. Starship troopers the movie had all the names right, even had some of the events right, but by and large it just took the elements of that book and just scrambled it into it's own concoction. But at least that entertained me.
and it's not that I didn't go in realizing that it wouldn't be up to FH's standards. I knew from the start that BH and KJA didn't have the chops or the style that characterizes the original Dune novels. I had a friend who loved Dune to death (due to a MUD if any of you older nerds are out there), but could not actually finish the book because the literary style was too much for him to handle (not saying he's a dumb guy, but Dune is definitely a contemplative subtle fare, as opposed to quick and spunky read). but when house atreides came out, he loved it, a lot. and that to me was one indication that the new novels just were not on the same level... that and creating prequels or intermediate books/films is a creative effort that is only slightly above just doing a remake. the story elements and framework are there, you just have to fill in the blanks to agree with canon events in the storyline. and it's not like I didn't read the dozens of bad reviews on hunters and sandworms. taking with a grain of salt the fact that some people will be somewhat fanatical about the original work, I was still prepared for a book that would very likely be far below my hopes and standards. but hey, it's dune 7, something I've dreamed of that would never happen. it's been a couple years since the publication, and my curiousity just happened to crest aftet my latest re-reading of books 1-6, so I figure, swallow your pride and expectations and buy the book, find out what happens.
now I don't care what happens. the reviews have given me enough about the ending to not care at all. and I don't want to have the words of this book in my brain filed under the heading dune. I'd rather live with my imaginings and speculation of what happened after that no-ship left chapterhouse then this heretical "canon" set by hunters and sandworms. so I'm just going to stop reading.
in all fairness, who could really create a dune novel that is on par with the old master? possibly no one. but at least one can try. in their forward the authors pretty much say, we can't do it, so we're not gonna do it. well if it's not worth doing right, it's just not worth doing. if you don't have the tools or the skills to do something right, why bother? and this isn't a matter of a piece of fan fic or video you create at home for yourself. there is an entire community of people who in some way own a piece of this mystique. Sure the Herbert family owns the rights to Dune, but like any book, the author gives a part of that world to his readership. and for a world like Dune that is no mean or small thing. so why sully this part of so many people's lives? why paint a picasso-esque painting if you can barely draw a stick figure? why attempt a re-arrangement of handel's messiah with a tone deaf choir and an orchestra of kazoos?
honestly this thing reads like a 4th grade paper, but instead of "what I did last summer" it's "here's what happens in Dune". there's no subtlety to this thing, whole chapters feel like just a listing of events. so this happened, then this happened, which caused this, then this and then the chapter ends. switch scene and character, repeat ad nauseum. the style is so heavy handed, even in the first hundred pages I have no idea how many times the word "whores" was used. every third page? every other page? and really there were two very easy ways to make this entire effort a decent piece of work. one is to use writers who have proven that they have the ability to handle the material and style. I think of the second Foundation trilogy, authorized to be written by the Asimov estate to Greg Bear, Gregory Benford and David Brin. each of these authors a master of science fiction in their own right. when you read these books you know that they are not Isaac's work, but you are reading something where you know the author has a respect and familiarity with the material, as well as a writing ability to give it the substance and style it deserves. the second method is to have good editors, not just the ones at the publisher checking for spelling and punctuation, but people who know and love the story. Countless author's turn to family and friends who have read their works over the years, knowing that when you create an entire universe, sometimes you forget things. Or take a note from Orson Scott Card, who in many books talks about and thanks the commmunity at his hatrack river website that have helped him keep the new Ender and Alvin books inline with the old. and sure there are still the occasional continuity errors, but they are neither frequent nor glaring. I don't doubt that if the Herbert estate tried to find a forum of Dune adherents to help proofread Dune 7, it could find thousands, tens of thousands of eager volunteers. I know I'd have jumped at the opportunity
but this thing makes no attempt to carry on a greater work. even though it may not be possible to match the groundbreaking original novels, that is no excuse to not try. I find the authors excuse that they had to write 6 books to bring people back into Dune peurile. I never left Dune! there is a following, you don't need to recreate it. George Lucas could have released star wars episode 1 with no trailers or advertising and you can bet that the fans would have flocked to see it. and then there's the line about how the later novels did not sell because they were too complicated. well that depth and density is a large part of why people love those novels and go back to read them again and again. some things are not meant for everyone because not everyone has the mindset or interests to truly appreciate them. by BH and KJA's logic the best pieces of writing belong to primetime television as the audience for any hit network tv show far surpasses the following for any given book. not everyone likes opera, either because they don't understand it or it's just not something that appeals to their psyche. that doesn't mean that you stop staging or writing operas, that means you keep on doing opera, sure you can put a new spin or innovation on it, but respecting and honoring the history and tradition of it. leave the pop music to someone else but keep don giovanni off the american idol albums! the supposed rationalizations of these two pretenders to the throne only further strengthens my suspicions that the money and not the legacy is their primary objective. after all they've done it, they've written the conclusion. but hey, we still got some in between books for you, c'mon paul of dune. you guys could have picked a more mysterious era, the gap between dune/dune messiah was not that great in time and the outline for the fremen jihad already exists. why not pick the period starting from leto's living still-suit through his slow evolution into the pre-worm?
I'm sorry but I have to go into my issues with the way the characters are used, even though I've only ready 100 pages. and I apologize as I know several of these points have been brought up before, but I have to vent my spleen
SPOILERS!!!
1) what is up with this oracle of time nonsense? in a hundred pages it's mentioned twice and I get that it's something silly they made up for the prequels. but it's not mentioned in any Dune book, and the original series firmly states that the navigators use their limited prescience to avoid the perils of folded space. there's nothing about this all encompassing entity that looks out for guild navigators making sure they don't drive into potholes. way to tie into your silly prequels, I think it's safe to say that the oracle of time didn't exist in FH's outline
2) how does no one know about teg's super speed? there were rumours all over gammu about it after he ran roughshod across ysai and he clearly demonstrates in front of a whole panel of BG observers(and talks to Duncan about it!) in chapterhouse. yet somehow everyone is ignorant and Duncan didn't remember that conversation.
3) they refer to the face dancer couple (I don't care what they write, they are a face dancer couple in my head now and forever) twice in the first 100 pages. for a subtle unknown power that has hidden itself for time unknown, they make themselves pretty blatantly obvious, as evidence in the conversation between the face dancers and the lost tleilaxu master
4) the bene gesserit are an organization concerned with the progress of human race, would rather function as the power behind the throne than sit on it, sees themselves as teachers of societies, use subtlety as a way of life, and have saying upon saying that nothing must be held as an absolute, even the sayings themselves. somehow they become this polarized power hungry organization that is about as subtle as a man whacking an electrical panel with a sledgehammer. and yeah I get that merging with the honored matres changes some things, but the whole idea was to be so subtle that the matres didn't realize that in victory they had lost.
5) the idea of torturing reverend mothers in the no ship was stupid. it's stated in heretics and chapterhouse that the BG bodily control allows them to pretty much die at will.
6) dunno what this mysterious origins of the matres is going to be but it looks like something about tleilaxu women. it says flat out in chapterhouse that the matres had their origins in fish speakers allied with bene gesserits in extremis. but this book treats it like a big unknown, but murbella has other memory... and she's from an established matre world, so the chances that she had just one honored matre ancestor is pretty good, in case you are wondering just try taking the number 2 to the power of say a couple dozen generations and see how likely it seems. and with other memory, it only takes one
7) in that same vein, why would sheeana have to state that she has had ancestors that studied kaballah... um she had ancestors that were just flat out jewish since it's established that she's of fremen descent and there are numerous inferences in the original books that the jews were one of the precursors of the fremen.
8) why do they treat rebeccah's sharing with lucilla as a changing moment? sure it changed her and pushed the bene gesserit mindset strongly into her mental framework, but she had already experienced the spice agony prior to that and had other memories. you'd think that the idea of being more than herself started with the surviving the original agony. but they make it sound like she was meek and obedient until the horde of lampadas came along, I'm pretty sure that when you have other memories of history and ritual that the rabbi only learned the old fashion way, that you already know that your old mentor is not infallible
9) when did everyone become prescient? Duncan Idaho is now prescient and so is Sheeana... that ability isn't necessarily present in every Atreides, not to mention that genetically Idaho isn't all that Atreides (though chapterhouse implies that he has some gene markers of Siona, those cheeky tleilaxu). but nowhere in either heretics or chapterhouse does either indivdiual show any inkling of prescience. Sheeana has worm super powers and Duncan has mentat super powers plus altered vision based on combining mentat stuff with the merging of his serial lives.
10) since when was folding into another dimension a risk? nothing was ever mentioned of ships punching into another dimension. ah well, it's a great excuse to introduce that bastard child the oracle of time back into the mix
11) in the meeting with the guild representatives there is a reference about how there used to be multiple sources of melange. um there were two, rakis and the tleilaxu. maybe the authors should look up the definition of the word multiple
12) in the same confrontation they describe the rep's braid as resembling an electrical cord... stunning visual metaphor guys, truly. why not a hirsute snake? or overgrown follicular parasite? something with a little more punch than... it looks like a cable. better to have not mentioned it than to use such a weak reference
END SPOILERS!!
I shudder to think of how long this rant would have continued if I had actually finished the book, especially if the ghola bit is as horrific as so many people say. the only thing new Dune thing I want to read is the outline, so do the community a favor Brian and give it to the public
Summary of Hunters of DuneHunters of Dune and the concluding volume, Sandworms of Dune, bring together the great story lines and beloved characters in Frank Herbert's classic Dune universe, ranging from the time of the Butlerian Jihad to the original Dune series and beyond. Based directly on Frank Herbert's final outline, which lay hidden in a safe-deposit box for a decade, these two volumes will finally answer the urgent questions Dune fans have been debating for two decades.
At the end of Chapterhouse: Dune--Frank Herbert's final novel--a ship carrying the ghola of Duncan Idaho, Sheeana (a young woman who can control sandworms), and a crew of various refugees escapes into the uncharted galaxy, fleeing from the monstrous Honored Matres, dark counterparts to the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. The nearly invincible Honored Matres have swarmed into the known universe, driven from their home by a terrifying, mysterious Enemy. As designed by the creative genius of Frank Herbert, the primary story of Hunters and Sandworms is the exotic odyssey of Duncan's no-ship as it is forced to elude the diabolical traps set by the ferocious, unknown Enemy. To strengthen their forces, the fugitives have used genetic technology from Scytale, the last Tleilaxu Master, to revive key figures from Dune's past--including Paul Muad'Dib and his beloved Chani, Lady Jessica, Stilgar, Thufir Hawat, and even Dr. Wellington Yueh. Each of these characters will use their special talents to meet the challenges thrown at them.
Failure is unthinkable--not only is their survival at stake, but they hold the fate of the entire human race in their hands.
Literature & Fiction Books
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